About a year ago, we launched NLTinterlinear.com as the best place to study the Greek text of the New Testament alongside a contemporary English translation. For the past year, we have kept it behind a login wall — the login has been free, but necessary to access the text. We did that with the idea that those early users of the site should be able to contact us easily, and we wanted to be able to email them with questions if we saw an error in the application while they were working with it.

Today we are still officially in “Beta,” but we’ve removed the login wall. Now you don’t have to sign up or login in order to use the NLT interlinear.

Why still beta? Well, the big reason is that the Hebrew-NLT matchup is not yet available, and we anticipate making some changes and improvements to the interface in the process of bringing that data in when it is available.

Nevertheless, we’ve made some other improvements to the site. The most important of these is that URLs are now clean and shareable — you can now share any page on the site, and the URL is sensible. Along with that, we’ve included Facebook “Share” and Twitter “Tweet” buttons on every page. So now you can easily share a page of the site on one of those services, and the URL will make sense and not be unduly long.

Please give the NLT interlinear a whirl and let us know how we can improve it!

Big News

The big new this week, of course, was the relaunch of the NLT Blog. However, in some circles that news was overshadowed by the online release of the New International Version’s latest revision (go figure). Ahead of the release of the text, Bible Gateway, in conjunction with the Gospel Coalition, launched the Perspectives in Translation Forum, a blog-like entity that is presenting answers from a variety of scholars on a set of really interesting questions surrounding English Bible translation. The posts are all worth reading, but my two favorites so far are Robert Yarbrough’s post on what makes a Bible translation accurate (Answer: that’s a complicated question with multiple answers) and Doug Moo’s post on Romans 1:17, which is really more about the practice of translation and the usefulness of the category “literal.”

I’ve spent a bit of time reading through parts of the new NIV, and my main response is a hearty “thank you” to the fine men and women who poured themselves into the process of translating with an eye toward helping the English-speaking world connect with God’s Word. I know a couple of the members of that translation team personally, and I know that they live out the dictum expressed by J.A. Bengel: “Apply yourself wholly to the text; apply the text wholly to yourself.” These men and women deserve our respect; I’m not suggesting that we can’t closely scrutinize their work and offer opinions, but I do think we should avoid impugning their motives or offering criticism without grace and thankfulness for their body of work. You can get a small glimpse at the breadth of their work here, and please watch this video to see the heart of the committee.

NIV Reviews and New Websites

There have been a number of responses to the NIV throughout the blogosphere, and others have offered a roundup. Here I’ll point to a particularly helpful early review from Rick Mansfield and a perspective from the Christian bookstore industry. But you can look at the text yourself on Bible Gateway, and even compare it to the earlier NIV reading and the TNIV. Click this link to see a four-column comparison of my favorite passage in the NLT, NIV (1984), TNIV, and NIV (2011). If you clicked on that link, you also might have noticed the new beta edition of Bible Gateway, which is pretty significant Bible news in its own right. (Speaking of new Bible websites, did you notice the new ESV website that also launched this week?)

If reading through one passage at a time is too slow for you, and you want a firehose of data about the changes that were made to the text of the NIV, go check out the work of Robert Slowley or John Dyer. These guys have done a great service to everyone interested in Bible translation by pulling together all this data and providing some statistical analysis. There is a lot of information there to drill down into, so take your time and check it out.

Old News Department

Technically this happened last week, but it is worth noting that Logos Bible Software, in partnership with SBL, released a free edition of the Greek New Testament with a unique critical apparatus. It is also worth noting that the Greek text behind the NLT, the result of the text-critical decisions of the NLT translation team, is also freely available with some great lexical and search tools online at http://NLTInterlinear.com, and has been for over a year now.

One more link I’d like to mention. I don’t really listen to podcasts anymore, but a few years back I was following one that read a chapter of the NLT every day. I really enjoyed it, but then they slowed down and eventually stopped. I just heard this week that Ryan Haack is back at it again, and if you join him tomorrow, you’ll be just in time to catch Philemon.

Program Notes

That’s all we have today for This Week in Bibles. If you have suggestions for posts that you think ought to be included or blogs that I should be reading but haven’t linked to, let me know in the comments or send me an email at KeithWilliams dot NLT @ gmail.

BTW, the title of this feature is a hat-tip to one of my favorite television programs as a kid, This Week in Baseball. In the pre-Internet age, TWIB and daily newspaper box scores were all a young baseball fan would need to keep on top of the sport.

The difference between the two translation philosophies can be seen in lots of ways. One is the question of whether it is appropriate (or even permissible) for the translator to add specificity in the translated text. Here’s a simple example in 2 Kings 24:19. I’m quoting first from the NASB, which generally provides a good word-for-word translation of the original text, and then from the NLT (dynamic equivalence):

2 Kings 24:18-19 (NASB95)
¹⁸ Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
¹⁹ He did evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that Jehoiakim had done.

2 Kings 24:18-19 (NLT)
¹⁸ Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. His mother was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah from Libnah.
¹⁹ But Zedekiah did what was evil in the LORD’s sight, just as Jehoiakim had done.

Look at the first word of v. 19. The NASB translates the Hebrew text literally with the pronoun “He.” Incidentally, all formal-equivalence translations (e.g., KJV, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, ESV; also NIV) join the NASB in rendering it “He.”

The NLT (joined by NCV, TEV; also HCSB) replaces the pronoun with the proper name Zedekiah. These dynamic translations feel free to translate beyond the literal wording to ensure that the meaning is accurately conveyed. (Everyone would agree that the antecedent to “he” is Zedekiah, who is named at the beginning of v. 18, even though the masculine name that immediately precedes the pronoun is Zedekiah’s maternal grandfather, Jeremiah.)

Is each approach appropriate? Is each permissible? Is one preferable to the other?

My answer is that each translation is simply following its own basic philosophy. The literal translations render the passage with a word-for-word correspondence. The dynamic translations render it with an expansion of the wording to ensure that the meaning is accurately conveyed.

If you use both styles of translation, you get the best of both worlds.

Ray observes, “I found it interesting how many of these highlights focus on trusting God and not worrying.”  Commenter Thomas points out, “users of NLT and ESV appear to highlight several different passages, while users of all the other translations concentrate exclusively on just a very few verses.”

The top highlighted verses were all highlighted in multiple translations, but one set of verses, Romans 8:38-39, was highlighted (relatively) often in the NLT, but not often in any of the other six. Why do you think these verses might have been so much more popular in the NLT than in the other translations?

Romans 8:38-39, NLT: (I’ve linked to Biblos here because of their useful parallel verses feature)

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons*, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow–not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below–indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

* Greek nor rulers.

The Greek text in Mark 12:42 says that she dropped in “two lepta, which is a kodrantes.” So if we simply translate it that way in English, everything is clear, right? Sure, if the reader has an intuitive sense of the value of two lepta! And Mark even gives us a clue by telling us that two lepta (Jewish coins) are equal to a kodrantes (a Roman coin). But most of us would still have to reach for a Bible dictionary to make sense of those terms. So translators have resorted to numerous solutions.

KJV: two mites, which make a farthing
RSV: two copper coins, which make a penny
NASB: two small copper coins, which amount to a cent (with a footnote)
NIV: two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny (with a footnote)
ESV: two small copper coins, which make a penny (with a footnote)
HCSB: two tiny coins worth very little (with a footnote)
NLT: two small coins (with a footnote)

Which translation is correct? I would argue that the KJV, RSV, NASB, NIV, and ESV communicate the wrong message. After all, a penny has very little value in our current economy. But in the first century, a kodrantes was equal to 1/64 of a denarius, and a denarius was considered fair pay for a day’s wage. If today’s wage for a laborer in the USA is $15 per hour, that comes to $120 for an 8-hour day. At this rate, 1/64 of a day’s wage is $1.88. Round it up to $2.00, and we could say that the widow dropped two dollar-coins into the collection box. That feels very different from “two coins worth only a fraction of a penny.”

It’s for that reason that the NLT simply says “two small coins” [footnote: Greek two lepta, which is a kodrantes (i.e., a quadrans)]. After all, the point of Jesus’ teaching was that the widow gave everything she had. And if her two small coins were worth a couple of dollars in our economy, let’s not give the impression that she had only two pennies.

• What method did the NLT translators use in making the NLT?
• Who were the translators of the NLT?
• What texts did the NLT translators use in their translation work?

Here’s the bottom line:

In summary, I couldn’t be happier with the NLT Bible. Many folks who pick up a
copy of the NLT and read it for the first time say that it’s like they’re
reading the Bible for the very first time. I couldn’t agree more. It’s a breath
of fresh air. The readability is absolutely fantastic and knowing that the
NLT is translated by top notch scholars with a deep care for the original
languages put me over the top.

It’s well worth reading how he arrived at this conclusion, complete with a graphics and a Bible Translation chart (though we envision the chart a little differently–it’s not an exact science). And once he made up his mind, he purchased a Tyndale Select Bible and took an amazing 100 photos of this Bible.

]]> http://www.nltblog.com/index.php/2009/04/eyeplorer/feed/ 0 http://www.nltblog.com/index.php/2009/03/choosing-a-bible-translation-cbe/ http://www.nltblog.com/index.php/2009/03/choosing-a-bible-translation-cbe/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:43:00 +0000 Laura Bartlett http://www.thpwebdev5.com/index.php/2009/03/choosing-a-bible-translation-cbe/ If you live in the Dallas area, have you considered attending the Christian Book Expo? It’s a new event this month that offers author signings, seminars, and an exhibit hall with 60 exhibitors –mostly publishers.

Brent Kercheville has been writing a series of blogs about his interaction with the NLT text. One of those posts is called “Tongues vs. Languages (1 Corinthians 12-14).” Brent appreciates the NLT’s use of “languages” in place of the more obscure term “tongues” in 1 Cor 12, but he expresses frustration that the NLT then uses “tongues” in chapter 14.

In fact, the NLT uses both “speaking in tongues” and “speaking in unknown languages” in 1 Cor 14. Why? We had vigorous debates on the translation committee as to how we should translate glossa in a way that would be understandable to modern readers–especially those without much background in biblical teaching. And the situation is further complicated because scholars and church historians are divided as to whether Paul was referring in this passage to human languages not otherwise known to the speaker or to ecstatic utterances that are unrelated to any human language. If the translation had simply and consistently used “unknown languages,” it would imply that Paul was referring to human languages unknown to the speakers (as seems to have been the case on the Day of Pentecost; Acts 2:4-11). But if we had used the traditional term “tongues” throughout, it would imply that Paul was referring only to ecstatic utterances.

So in the end we decided to use both terms. This allows the reader to get the sense that Paul might have been referring to either or both of these meanings. We were apprehensive about using the word “tongues,” because it is a technical term understood only by readers well versed in biblical teaching. On the other hand, it is the term used in Pentecostal churches to refer to the contemporary phenomenon of “speaking in tongues.” So we used both “tongues” and “unknown languages” in order to provide the broadest sense of the meaning of the passage.

Incidentally, the NLT Study Bible provides a word study on the various uses of glossa in the New Testament.

The issue of sentence structure in English Bibles is interesting. On the surface, one might assume that an English Bible could/should simply follow the structure of the sentences in Hebrew and Greek. But the very concept of a “sentence” differs from language to language.

Let’s look at the prologue to Romans (Rom 1:1-7) as an example. We begin by reminding ourselves that koine Greek does not actually use punctuation or paragraph breaks, nor does it differentiate between upper case and lower letters. This might surprise you, because the UBS Greek New Testament uses paragraphs, capital letters, and punctuation (commas, periods, question marks, and semicolons). But this is because the editors of that Greek text have made judgment calls as to how the Greek “sentences” should be presented in a format we’re accustomed to seeing in English.

In the UBS Greek text, Rom 1:1-7 is presented as one long sentence (i.e., the first full stop comes at the end of verse 7). But does that mean that English translations should also use only one sentence for that passage? Formal-equivalence translations tend to do so. For example, KJV, RSV, NASB, NRSV, and ESV all use only one sentence for this long prologue. Interestingly, the NKJV uses two sentences. NIV and TNIV use four sentences. NLT² uses nine sentences.

Which approach is correct? I would argue that they all are. Each translation uses a unique translation philosophy, and the structure of English sentences plays into that philosophy. Unfortunately, the proponents of formal equivalence sometimes imply that the only legitimate style of translation is to follow the sentence structure of the original texts as closely as possible. But life isn’t quite that simple.